He was very helpful for several adventures [Crabby alcoholic Jedi are the Best]. I eventually ended up killing him off [much to my own surprise] when I needed an NPC to turn out to be a spy and murder someone important. But he was great while he lasted._________________- J.T. Swift

We've never played this, and our group are coming up to this era so I'm rewriting it to suit our campaign and skill level. We're still a few small journeys from it and Alderaan hasn't been blown up yet, so I've only just started looking over it.

Our party is fairly powerful, the players are all experienced RPG gamers, the party itself has a Jedi with 7d lightsabre skill and about 4d in control/sense, we have a Coynite with 7d melee skills and full armour/equipment, a couple of Horansi including a stealthy Masha sniper and a tough Kasa with high brawling, we have a powered armour fitted freighter captain, a near-human force user that's started on the Jedi path alongside our traditional Jedi but the near-human hasn't a lightsabre yet (I'll give him the Ithorian one), we have a disguise expert with very high perception skills and a Y-Wing. We even have a proto-SpecForce squad along for the ride, since we made contact with the developing Rebellion early in our careers and did our best to help them out and work with them, and we concede to their military authorities as rightful galactic government where the Empire is unlawful by our estimation.

The rest of the fleet includes a strongly modified YT-1300, a light pinnace, the Y-Wing, and a CEC Corvette we have shares in with an NPC group. The Corvette isn't fully owned so can't be risked in battle but defensively it's powerful and makes an excellent mobile base. We'd take on a full squadron of Imperial TIE without hestitation.

The general direction of the party is to become a Rebel cell under our own steam, to help the Rebel Command as requested, one day turn up at something like the Battle of Endor with our own cruisers to fight on the side of the Rebellion. We've sought to develop Rebel contacts and assist in any way.

I'm just glancing over Graveyard of Alderaan and haven't really read it in detail so far.

Looking at the adventure itself I want to develop the Ithorian role and their Herdship further. Not just as a character environment but also in practicable terms, such as turning up in a fire fight if something like a major Imperial fleet unit arrives on scene.

I want to add an ISB substation to the mining base I think, toughen it up a bit. There's no real reason for "Imperial agents" to hide in the Alderaanian system, when a garrison base and TIE wing can simply be left if security is in any way an issue.
I think I'll give it an ISB office complex, Imperial Survey Corps detachment (a couple of scoutships and a dozen personnel or so) and a company of Stormtroopers, plus regular base security troops for regular policing and a TIE squadron with recons. Then a private contractor (Imperial allied) actually running the mining operations.

Vader's personal contingent of Stormtroopers I have elite stats for which should sufficiently beef them up to move the characters around as needed. I personally feel things like Imperial Royal Guard denote personal involvement of Palpatine himself, where Vader tended to lead elite veteran Stormtroopers rather. In our game the only time you find 2d Stormtroopers is among raw recruits and training bases, elite front line Stormtroopers are a totally different story with 6d blaster: rifle skill and 3d base dex/strength, in assault formations they give every reason for the fear they inspire throughout the galaxy, but we use them as small unit assault troops and use Imperial Army for large formations. It keeps the Stormtroopers being something special and our group prefers that, the party really gets nervous when Stormtroopers show up. They'll run from anything bigger than a small squad and they should.

I might make Captain Janus and his "Imperial Officers" a bunch of ISB Agents instead, and really beef them up that way with some good stats/skills and weaponry. As they are the Coynite and Kasa Horansi will simply kill them as soon as they see them, not much short of a thermal detonator is going to even delay that, unless they have some serious melee skills and vibroweapons. And then our Jedi is going to spark up a lightsabre. Run of the mill "Imperial Officers" just aren't going to cut the mustard here and I can't imagine why they'd be assigned in the first place. You want to monitor Rebel activity at an abandoned site, you send ISB Agents, operatives, and well equipped. The job of Imperial Officers is to command military subordinates, not do secret agent stuff.

I'm going to change the Skipray Blastboat in the hangar, used to get to the Last Chance, into a Theta class shuttle I think. Seems more fitting and tough enough to handle a bunch of TIE with a good crew.

The TIE fighters that attempt to intercept will be from the mining base garrison, nothing to change here as base TIE pilots don't have the skills of Navy TIE pilots.

The rest aboard the Last Chance is basically okay but I'll beef up the difficulties and just tweak generally for a mature gaming group.

The final showdown with Vader's Star Destroyer blockade will be the Avenger (ISD II) and two Imperial class (ISD I), with naval TIE pilots at elite skills.
There will be straight battleline problem solving here as I've rewritten ISD stats to reflect movie canon, so being much tougher than WEG ISD is quite an understatement.

They're really not going to want to mess with the Avenger (15d6 frontal broadside from octuple turbolaser banks if it engages in real capital ship combat, not to mention assault-proton torps etc.).

In a frigate, even one as heavily armoured as Last Chance the party will want to put one of the ISD I (rewritten to movie canon and renamed Imperators) escorts in the Avenger's battle squadron between them and Vader's ship, given the relatively small size of the Last Chance an Imperator will probably use its lateral turbolaser banks at 6d6 until they realise they're not doing any damage even when hits are made.

If they can keep an Imperator between them and the Avenger, and manage not to get herded or surrounded, they may have time to escape the vicinity before the Imperator opens up with its main ion battery and knocks them out (two heavy batteries either side of the superstructure, will definitely ionise the frigate if hit). If that happens they will be boarded, captured and held aboard the Avenger for Vader, well not really they'll probably escape in starfighters aboard the Last Chance but will lose the ship.

The main thing is not inviting the Avenger to take pot shots at them. It's purpose built to vapourise heavy warships and not much else. It doesn't really have a "just wound them" kind of gun so you really want to be on a fully armoured battle station if it's going to fire anything at you. So the final task of the party will be avoid the guns of the Avenger and escape the clutches of its escorting ISD I and TIE.

My party are basically smuglers who are looking to juin the rebellion and I thought the adventure gave them a good in if they want. WHat worries me is that thye might in the end decide to try and sell the ship in the black market. So I'm preparing for that as well. Chances are If they do they will get the Imperials on their tail or ruthless crimelords trying to kill them once it becomes known they have a weapons ship they are trying to unload, in the end forcing their hand to go to the rebellion to protect themselves.

I've been running the game in what I consider cinematic style to match what you see in the movies. So I'm allowing them too 1 shot stormtroopers and the like as the heroes did in the movies. That will change when they encounter a main bad guy but so far they seem to be enjoying it.

And I don't agree that there wouldn't be any republic military fighters on board. The adventure specifically states that alderaan packed up it's clone wars kit for when they might need it again. So all the stuff would be republic military gear, fighters included.

Well that's up to you as a matter of interpretation and resolving sometimes contradictory canon for your game setting. Our group uses the idea of alternate SWU timelines to resolve canon, our game is in an alternate SWU where things aren't necessarily as written depending on canon-source.

The Last Chance, being frigate sized would mostly carry field equipment in its cargo hold, proper hangars require several thousand tons of cargo capacity allocated to house them so that if the craft was a dedicated starfighter carrier in a ship that size there wouldn't be much cargo space left over for anything else, the remaining holds would be filled with spares and equipment to support starfighter operations (whether it functions as a fleet carrier or simply a transport they still need that equipment).

That would mean either you only have a handful of starfighters, like 5 or at most 10 disassembled plus support equipment, plus other cargo like field equipment and that's not enough starfighters to make the bother worth it. If you were going to mothball a starfighter force you want like 30 or 60 craft and couldn't carry anything else.

So I'd suggest for simple logistics the only starfighters aboard would be its own embarked craft for defence and not very many, its cargo holds would have to full of field equipment like artillery and repulsortanks and the like.
Otherwise it would have to be a much larger ship.

Of those handful of starfighters it does have, probably as defensive embarked craft rather than mothballed Clone Wars craft for two reasons: the line of battle starfighters would've been relinquished back to the Empire aboard their Acclamator and Venator proto-Star Destroyers at the end of the Clone Wars. There'd be questions if they didn't have their starfighter complements aboard, and other vehicles like walkers.
And because only a handful of starfighters could be embarked on the Last Chance and still leave cargo space for field equipment, it isn't worth mothballing a starfighter force because you can't fit the 30 or more to make the exercise worthwhile without sacrificing all the cargo capacity. I'd say the starfighters would've been outsourced in manufacture, like SoroSuub and the like so they could be used without being traced and causing questions. It's a real key point that Alderaan was not supposed to have a standing military when they started fighting Palpatine in the Senate, or he would've sent his forces to sack the planet long before the Death Star arrived.

And I'd say the field equipment mothballed in the Last Chance isn't the things you'd expect to find on a proto-Star Destroyer, but was locally equipped or locally made war materiel like what we see the Rebellion using on Hoth. Combat airspeeders, field artillery, planetary shields, base artillery, miscellaneous support equipment. All that gear is considered vintage in the Rebellion era so it makes sense that it was support equipment supplied by individual systems forces during the Clone Wars.

I do get the temptation to want a Republic Military order of battle from the Clone Wars aboard, with walker-artillery and speeder-gunships like in AotC/Ep2, and ARC-170 and V-17 or whatever but the fact remains that years before the Death Star arrived, during the rise of the Empire period following the Clone Wars, when Alderaan opposed Palpatine in the Senate, they would've been invaded as Separatists or terrorists if they kept their proto-Star Destroyers and if all the equipment was stripped from them when returned to the Empire, the question of where all the starfighters and walkers are would've been asked.

So for my own rewrite I think I'll use the idea of secondary support equipment supplied by systems forces in the Clone Wars. It wasn't all Acclamators and walkers but you need occupational forces and second echelon equipment, and field artillery and combat speeders and things like that, these could easily be aboard the Last Chance without being traced or upon any Imperial records. If squadrons of ARC-170 or dozens of heavy walkers were aboard, it would be in the records at Coruscant and wouldn't have been simply overlooked for three decades.

I'm considering running this. I'm not currently playing Star Wars, but I do have the bug. If I can convince my group to switch, I just might put this together.

I just started reading the adventure, but here are some preliminary thoughts...

1. The PCs all start on Lusdu. Player's choice, but some may be from Alderaan and lucky enough to be off world when the Death Star hit. All players will have lost their businesses, ships, homes, whatever on Alderaan.

2. Lusdu is close, also a Core World, and is taking in Alderaanian refugees. Rumor is that the Empire is about to declare martial law. No one really knows what happened to Alderaan a couple of weeks ago. All kinds of speculation floats around. Something disrupted the planet, but most think that it's got to be a natural disaster. Nobody links the report about Governor Tarkin dying in a shuttle crash to the Alderaan disaster at this point.

3. I'm thinking of using most, but not all of the 1E character templates, but only allowing one of each type (not set on this). I'm thinking of preparing a document that describes the character (I expect to have some players new to roleplaying) and his link to the others--using what is written on the backs of the templates in the book. Players will pick based on type of character, not stats. The template is revealed once the player picks his character type.

4. Alien Student of the Force will be a Guardian of the Whills type. Instead of saying, "I am with the Force, and the Force is with me," over and over, he will pray, "I am a servant of the Light and of the life that infuses it."

5. A Minor Jedi will be a padawan who lost his master during the Purge. He has cut himself off from the Force, like Luke did in TLJ, to hide himself. His background is secret.

6. The Failed Jedi and Quixotic Jedi templates will be Jedi Knights--not Masters--who escaped the Purge and have cut themselves off from the Force, like the padawan above. The Failed Jedi will be wracked with guilt. Maybe he feels as if he was a coward. The Quixotic Jedi will be a Jedi--not a Master--who was captured and tortured, but escaped, and his psyche bears the scars of that incident. He has also cut himself off from the Force.

These can become great redemption stories in the hands of the right player. It's also an excuse for players to play these character not like typical Jedi. They're damaged people.

If I have a player choose one of these Force users, the Force will be calling them. I may have an incident the way Rey did with the lightsaber on the Bazaar.

7. The Ithorian ship comes to Lusdu, and people scramble to get aboard her, running form the possible declaration of Martial Law on the planet. The Ithorians only allow people to stay 2D6 days--as they keep the population controlled. They're flexible within two days, though.

8. The Imperial ISB Agent, Dal Rogos, I want to play like a charming character with a pencil thin mustache straight out of a 40's Bogart B&W adventure film. He'll be flamboyant, and he may attract the PCs. If he does, this will be a great set-up for betrayal.

What sort of skill level do you see those 3 force characters starting out at, if two of them are supposedly knight level?_________________It's Not who you kill, but how they die!
You cannot dodge it if you do not know it is coming, and you cannot hit it if you do not know its there.

What sort of skill level do you see those 3 force characters starting out at, if two of them are supposedly knight level?

Just the 1D that's on the Template. My thought is that they've closed themselves off from the Force in order to hide, and their powers have waned. It's been years since they've used any of the Force skills.

I played this long after my post above..
Regarding the weird part of the surviving palace I can recommend to switch it to a surviving part of an orbital palace in high orbit far from the planet._________________My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

What sort of skill level do you see those 3 force characters starting out at, if two of them are supposedly knight level?

Just the 1D that's on the Template. My thought is that they've closed themselves off from the Force in order to hide, and their powers have waned. It's been years since they've used any of the Force skills.

Wouldn't that then mean they could 'get back up to speed' when they finally do re-open themselves up easier?_________________It's Not who you kill, but how they die!
You cannot dodge it if you do not know it is coming, and you cannot hit it if you do not know its there.

Sometimes I put story restrictions on character creation. Sometimes I don't. I'm expecting new players, and I want to make character generation very easy. So, to expedite the process, this time, I'm only going to allow them to pick a template from the 1E core game. A few templates, like the Ewok, I won't allow. They don't fit.

The players will still pick from the selection of templates, and they will still allocate their skill dice to their own choice.

What sort of skill level do you see those 3 force characters starting out at, if two of them are supposedly knight level?

Just the 1D that's on the Template. My thought is that they've closed themselves off from the Force in order to hide, and their powers have waned. It's been years since they've used any of the Force skills.

Wouldn't that then mean they could 'get back up to speed' when they finally do re-open themselves up easier?

Maybe. We'll see if anybody picks those templates. I don't expect a large group. Maybe three players--especially after I hit them with my rule that, if I'm going to put all this work into this, then I need a commitment from them that they will show up for every game sessions. No no-shows (which translates to minimal no-shows--something will come up, I'm sure).

Once they have a template, I'll see what kind of input they have into making the character interesting. Those that don't want to do that, don't have to.